IMAGE OF THE WEEK
Ralph W. Tutlane, Jr. (’83) shares this image showing the distinct boundary of the C Climate, with the blooming trees at the bottom of the picture, and the D Climate at the top of the picture where the trees have not yet started blooming. “I took these pictures on 5/2/18 on PA Route 17 a couple of miles east of Ickesburg, PA, in Perry County. It is the Tuscarora Mountain Range on the Perry County side of the Mountain. Juniata County is at the top of the range.”
GOOD NEWS
- Ryan Baxter was promoted to associate teaching professor.
- Beth King was promoted to associate teaching professor.
- The new Riparia website is up and running and is still available at the same link as the previous website (http://riparia.psu.edu).
NEWS
Penn State graduate students win award in geospatial intelligence
A team of Penn State graduate students recently received the 2018 Michael P. Murphy Award in Geospatial Intelligence, a Penn State endowed scholarship award, for work they did during a geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) course offered though the John A. Dutton e-Education Institute.
Conservationists introduce loosestrife beetles to battle invasive plants
[Ed. note: Rob Brooks and Peter Backhaus consulted with the nonprofit group, Wildlife for Everyone Foundation]
A small group from Wildlife For Everyone gathered to see more than 600 alien Galerucella calmariensis beetles released late last month at the Julian Wetlands — a man-made marsh adjacent to Miles Hollow Road, north of Port Matilda.
Insects accidently imported from other countries have caused big problems. The list is long — emerald ash borer, gypsy moth, hemlock wooly adelgid and, now, the spotted lanternfly. However, this alien beetle has been introduced to solve a problem, not cause one.
ICIK names 2018 Whiting Indigenous Knowledge Research Award winners
Penn State graduate students Marie Louise Ryan, Johann Strube and Megan Griffin have been recognized with the 2018 Whiting Indigenous Knowledge Research Award to help fund their research pursuits. The award, open to all full-time Penn State undergraduate and graduate students, is funded by the Marjorie Grant Whiting Endowment for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledge and supported by Penn State’s University Libraries and the Interinstitutional Center for Indigenous Knowledge (ICIK).
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
From Census Tracts to Local Environments: An Egocentric Approach to Neighborhood Racial Change
Barrett A. Lee, Chad R. Farrell, Sean F. Reardon, Stephen A. Matthews
Spatial Demography
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40980-018-0044-5
Most quantitative studies of neighborhood racial change rely on census tracts as the unit of analysis. However, tracts are insensitive to variation in the geographic scale of the phenomenon under investigation and to proximity among a focal tract’s residents and those in nearby territory. Tracts may also align poorly with residents’ perceptions of their own neighborhood and with the spatial reach of their daily activities. To address these limitations, we propose that changes in racial structure (i.e., in overall diversity and group-specific proportions) be examined within multiple egocentric neighborhoods, a series of nested local environments surrounding each individual that approximate meaningful domains of experience. Our egocentric approach applies GIS procedures to census block data, using race-specific population densities to redistribute block counts of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians across 50-meter by 50-meter cells. For each cell, we then compute the proximity-adjusted racial composition of four different-sized local environments based on the weighted average racial group counts in adjacent cells. The value of this approach is illustrated with 1990–2000 data from a previous study of 40 large metropolitan areas. We document exposure to increasing neighborhood racial diversity during the decade, although the magnitude of this increase in diversity—and of shifts in the particular races to which one is exposed—differs by local environment size and racial group membership. Changes in diversity exposure at the neighborhood level also depend on how diverse the metro area as a whole has become.